Druidess Dream Zero Zero 00-0018-2475

Slender build, with an especially thin waist. Her arms and legs are a bit longer than normal, and her hands a bit larger and with longer fingers. Her breasts are quite huge for a girl of her height and age, given her slim figure, but, usually, don't stand out much, mostly because of her style of dress. (This is usually a shock for people who notice them late and wonder whether they've been always there.)

Her skin is a very pale color that usually is either greenish, yellowish, pink-whitish, or a combination of those. This actually depends on the condition of the different types of very thin lichens growing on her skin, but the actual growth could probably be noticed only upon microscopic analysis. Most of her skin is tattooed in abstract, tribal patterns, with jagged, swirly, pointy and spirally lines crossing all over her body (actually, those are not really tattoos, but unicellular symbionts with a siliceous shell known as “diatoms”).

Her tattoos swirl on part of her face and draw the “gearwheel, sun and moon” Free State Emblem around and over her large left eye, which is a deep emerald green in color. Her right eye is cybernetic, consisting of a red lens and a bit of hardware around it. It is unclear whether she still has the eye under that, or it is missing.

Her hair is long and straight, light blue, and she changes its style about once a day. If she's bored, far more often than that. It often has small accessories or trinkets hanging from here and there.

Apart from her swirly tattoos and her cybernetic left eye, this little girl usually wears a… well, something that's a bit like a crossover between an oddly multicolored Shinto priestess' outfit, an even more gaudily colored lab-coat-like wear, and an even, even weirder… well, you know what? It's probably better just to describe it.

First of all, yes, it has a lot of colors. Maybe more than you even thought existed. It looks like someone took the outline of a lot of things, mostly alien-looking symbols, plants, machines, spacecrafts, various tools and humanoid figures, then overlapped all of them in the most chaotic way possible, and then colored each region a different color with spray paint… and used THAT as a texture.

It has long, large kimono-like sleeves, detached from the rest of the dress, which looks otherwise like a large, long overcoat with many pockets. Under that, she wears something not entirely unlike a Chinese dress, a pleated miniskirt, and a pair of low boots, all made in radiation-absorbing fabric. And everything looks like it barely survived the orbital bombardment of a paint factory.

Oh, yeah, and a cumbersome-looking utility belt from which hangs a large amount of high-tech-looking items and instruments.

The girl is also packed with accessories: necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, trinkets hanging from her hair or her clothes, from strips of paper with something written on them to screws, bolts or pieces of integrated circuits, or other small scraps of assorted machinery. Her appearance is certainly unique.

The first word that comes to mind would be “hyper”. Dream never stands still. Never. Ever.

She grows bored with incredible speed, sometimes after mere seconds, and, despite that has a frightening capacity of focusing her mind to one single task in an almost maniacal way.

So, she mostly jumps around from here to there, doing stuff that needs to be done (and sometimes even stuff that doesn't). No one ever caught her standing still, and she appears to sleep only a few hours a week, and sometimes not even that.

Sure, Freespacers are usually hyperactive, but Dream can seem the poster child for A.D.H.D. from time to time, even among them. On top of that, she seems totally oblivious of her own attractiveness and, as far as romantic and sexual relationships go, completely and utterly innocent. Which is bound to cause some hilarious scenes with all those Nepleslian marines around.

She often becomes incredibly clingy towards people or items she like and forges “eternal friendships” in the blink of an eye. She doesn't care if her oppressive feelings of friendship/love (no real difference between the two, for her) are one-sided. She probably doesn't know, doesn't realize, and doesn't care: once she decides she likes someone, she will cling on to him or her forever. And the scary part is that SHE LIKES EVERYONE.

She can come off as extremely annoying, with all her boundless curiosity, hyperactivity and clingy attitude. In many ways, she seems a lot more immature and childlike than her physical 15 years. Having the odd habit of giving nicknames to everyone and talking to nonsentient objects and treating them as people doesn't help either. However, she has a redeeming characteristic: a heart big enough to hold the universe and then some.

Dream loves everyone and everything, unconditionally. She is totally alien to cruelty, corruption, manipulation, and the harsh truths of the world. Being a Freespacer and knowing the Art of Never Again by heart, she understands the need for revolution, rebellion, war and self-defense, but she believes that, someday, those things will become nothing but old memories of a less enlightened age, and that, eventually, everything will change for the better.

She thinks that the universe can become a paradise. That everyone can be freed and saved, and that everyone can reach pure, perfect happiness, if only enough people would care about it. And she cares. She cares totally and without expecting anything in exchange. She cares with every ounce of her body, heart and soul. She cares with a faith that could move mountains, planets, entire galaxies, make and unmake universes.

She is completely and utterly dedicated, with a simple-minded but titanium-plated conviction that would make all of the universe's zealots, dictators and absolutists shrink and pale in comparison. And no amount of exposure to the brutal, gritty truth could make her waver or flinch not even one bit. On the contrary: it would all just fuel her conviction, much like throwing hydrogen in a star.

In conclusion, she is idealistic, compassionate, and mind-shatteringly selfless, to the point that she would gladly throw away her life just for the sake of bringing another spark of good and happiness, no matter how minute, into being in the universe.

And there is her greatest pitfall: she cares for everyone and loves everyone, except for herself. She doesn't HATE herself, nor does she think of herself as a martyr or something along those lines. Simply, she never thinks about herself.

That she's a person too. That she's precious too. That, if she throws away her life in some stupid way, all the good she could have done during the rest of her existence would never come into being.

“Hello! My name is Dream Zero Zero and, starting today, I'll be your new priestess! If you need any kind of help, just come to me!” “I know the definition, but I can't understand the concept. There is no such thing in the Free State.” “Don't worry, it's just twenty millisievert per hour of irradiation.” “I need some uranium. Do you have any?”

Trying new stuff, trying new hobbies, knowing people and making friends, tourism, memories and mementos, working, creating.

Waiting, standing still with nothing to do or not being able to help.

Save the universe.

Dreamvision as in “the stuff that Dream sees”. Non-Freespacers and overall “normal” people talking to Dream often wonder if she actually sees the world like everyone else does. Well, the short answer is no. The LONG answer lies in Dream's cybernetic eye. A really huge and cumbersome piece of hardware, as big (both internally and externally) as what is commonly accepted as the maximum possible size for eye implants, it constantly and continuously feeds directly to Dream's brain an incredible stream of information. Dream sees a lot of things. The whole EM spectrum, vital signs, electrical currents and magnetic fields, telescopic vision, microscopic vision, life-sign scanning, and a lot more. This explains, at least in part, Dream's colorful, hyperactive, overenthusiastic, completely-out-of-touch-with-reality demeanor: she is effectively as if always under the effect of extremely powerful visual hallucinogenic drugs, only about a million times more intense and wacky. And all true. It's like she's always, perpetually living her life as the ultimate trip. A waking dream in a billion colors: red, green, blue, radio, infrared, gamma, life, matter, stars, cells, electromagnetism, cosmic radiation, and countless more.

Dream Zero-Zero is the last in a long string of Type Three reincarnations (as her low serial number would suggest). Most of them were Freethinkers, Nursemaids, Gearheads or Mindtwisters, and their perceptions and experiences have colored Dream's personality, probably contributing to her radical, utterly dedicated personality. Oddly enough, her past incarnations left to her not only their digital memories, but also a number of physical mementos, trinkets and small items. And so, Dream started collecting mementos as well, out of habit, as something to pass on to her next reincarnation.

Once out of the cloning vat and the communal nursery, she immediately expressed her desire to become a druidess, and began her apprenticeship at her mothership's shrine.

The mothership in question, the Brilliant Unwritten Future Amidst The Neverending Heavens (long, flowery names are somewhat of a tradition among that fleet), had, in fact, a number of “shrines”, something like a mix of a church, a starship's engineering section, and a sickbay. A place where to take care of the body, the mind, and the soul.

The standing priestess of this particular shrine (the Industrious Temple of Starlight Shining Bright Between Deck 167 And The Archives Of Tomorrow), Druidess Spirit Two Two 22-9128-2999, took Dream as her apprentice, together with Druidess Vision Zero Nine 09-9200-6756. Vision and Dream had grown together at the communal nursery, and shared a deep bond of friendship, considering themselves sisters.

(Vision is not the only one whom Dream calls “sister”, however. She has kept in touch with most of her other “brothers and sisters” from the nursery.)

After some months of apprenticeship, however, a failure in the Mothership's hull depressurized the whole block. Dream was lucky enough to survive unscathed, but both Vision and Spirit were gravely wounded and would have died quickly without medical assistance. In the haste of the moment, Dream, the only one with medical training nearby, had to make a choice, and saved Vision first, When she turned to Spirit, it was already too late for her.

There weren't other druidesses that could take her place (most were already busy with other shrines on the Mothership or around the fleet), so Vision chose to step in, while Dream took care of her mentor's reincarnation process.

While reviewing Spirit's memories prior to feeding them to the new clone, however, Dream found out that she had been a Foretalker (something like an ambassador or an explorer) of the Free State to the Nepleslian Star Empire.

She decided that she would learn more about those other races outside the Free State and, in turn, teach them about the Freespacer way: the fivefold path of Pacifism, Balance, Endurance, Anarchy and Communism. She just wanted to try new stuff, know people, fool around a bit, and be of help. But, most of all, she understood that this would probably be the greatest challenge for the Free State in over two centuries of history: no longer isolated, their nation was being flung on the chessboard of the galaxy. And she would do all that's in her power to help her people stand up this challenge.

Enthusiastically, she signed up to join the crew of the Cirrus research station.

…however, said station hadn't been completed yet. Dream, however, was already fired up. And, so, basically… she whined. She whined and whined and whined. To everyone. To her fellow spacers, all over Polysentience, to the Nepleslian fleet command. Until, finally, she was given permission to assist Nepleslian fleet operations as an “irregular volunteer”, in the spirit of collaboration and mutual assistance between Nepleslia and the Free State.

Since then, she has embarked the supply freighter nss_banning, serving aboard as a medic during the Kennewes Offensive, where she has met Tweak Three Seven, a fellow member of the Free State (despite not being a Freespacer) who was present during the first contact between Free State and Nepleslia. She also made friends with Pavel Rostropovich, a Nepleslian engineer (to whom she gave, as a gift, a memento of hers, the Starlight Bolt), and, upon arriving on the NSS Alliance, Warmonger Keid. The two became immediately very close, exchanging gifts (a multicolored scarf and a lock of hair for a box of red LEDs) and traveling together with Tweak to the Cirrus Station.

Dream's mission and main purpose in life is to take care of everyone and everything. She is a mecha-druidess and a healer. A healer of bodies, minds and souls, of people and machines alike.

Dream is an proficient starship engineer, but her only experience and training is with the ad-hoc structure and systems of freespacer starships, and so, if let by her own, any project she lays her hands on will become utterly useless to anyone who is not a freespacer. She is nonetheless capable of designing freespace-styled crafts, starships, vehicles and structures, despite it not being her main area of expertise, because the act of planning, designing and building, that is, creation, means to follow the footsteps of the Great Maker, which is one of her religious duties.

Dream knows that the mind and the soul have their wounds and illnesses, just like the body does. She is not what other races would call a “psychologist”, however: she does not help people in a conventional way, but rather, through inspirational speeches, sheer kindness and sweetness, and her own infectious optimism. She is good at talking with people, but not because she's a subtle, smart, slick diplomat: just because of her intense drive, overwhelming cheerfulness and charisma, and her ability to empathize with anyone's suffering. She's also well-learned in the classics (which means The Art of Never Again, basically: it's all in there, after all) and what she lacks in culture, she makes up for in naive wisdom.

Dream is to a starship what a medic is to a patient: she takes care of it in a compassionate, caring, almost loving manner. To her, the starship is alive: the engines are its legs; the command bridge its brain; the hull its skin; the sensor its eyes; the crew its symbionts; the reactor its heart; the machine spirit its soul. It's not a metaphor: it is REALLY alive. You can't just “fix” it: you must “heal” him (or her, depending on whether she perceives the starship in question as male or female), in both body and spirit. Her concept of “healing a ship's spirit” lies in both modifying its layout, appearance and furnishings and interior decorations, and in rallying and cheering up the whole crew.

Not only Dream has undergone digital training on medicine in all of its forms and specializations, accumulating in her brain the whole knowledge her race could spare on its countless topics, but she's had numerous experiences and has done her best to assimilate other races' medical knowledge, too. If there's one field in which Dream is better than everything else, it would be medical science.

Dream has spent her whole life on starships and space stations. It's not been a long time, that's for sure, but she underwent basic digital training in Starship Operations, like everyone else. She'd make a pretty good pilot, navigator and overall bridge officer, although she never tried her hand at anything else than Freespacer vessels. She is also quite good at solar sailing, even though she is by no means a pro.

Dream uses her cybernetic brain implant for the usual things: to participate in the Free State's digital democracy, exchanging, uploading and downloading information, and recording her memories for her future reincarnation. She also has the equivalent of a huge medical encyclopedia stored in her memory. Plus, Dream pursues a number of mad project and theories regarding Polysentience's potential for further evolution.

Being an expert medic, Dream knows a good deal about xenobiology and genetic engineering, including Freespacer cloning and reincarnation procedures. Just like in regular engineering, Dream sees the act of creating and modifying life as inherently divine, and a way of approaching the Great Maker.

The Traveller shuttle Resplendent Herald of the Star-Winged Smile has been deployed by Dream's mothership to ensure her survival and aid her in her duties. It's not “her” craft, however: private propriety and ownership do not exist in the Free State.

It's a medium-sized (10m x 5m x 3m) Rescue Traveller, equipped with simple but sturdy medical systems for emergency first aid, making the craft, effectively, a spaceborne ambulance. A long, flexible mechanic arm, usually kept retracted, can pick up bodies floating in space and help in docking maneuvers with emergency pods. Another mechanical arm sports a Coherent Beam Laser, a multi-purpose cutting and welding tool, for emergencies. The inside of the craft is very simple, with an extremely small room for the pilot (the piloting seat is so cramped and surrounded by machinery that the pilot needs to wear skin-tight clothing to sit in there at all, and probably especially muscular, large or massive individuals wouldn't fit no matter what) and a somewhat larger room with an airlock and a well-equipped hospital bed, with all the technologies for the care and healing of organics and automata that can be fitted in such a small space. It's mostly automated, and resembles more a miniature assembly plant than anything else. Because of this, the whole craft is terribly cramped and cannot physically hold more than 4 people: one in the piloting seat, and three in the healing room (with the bed removed), virtually lying one on top of another. The Traveller's biological life support systems can be upgraded to support that many individuals, but not without additional, external supplies.

Dream also has with her, in her luggage, or on the Resplendent, a large amount of instruments and tools, mostly medical in nature. She always carries with her a bottle or two of SAoN-issued anti-radiation meds, since she's worried about non-Freespacers suffering radiation sickness because of her presence. Also, she has an emergency medical kit versatile enough to cover the biology and body structure of most races (especially Freespacer, Nepleslian and Geshrin). She uses a number of methods, biological, technological, chemical and biomechanical, so she's just as likely to slap a huge genetically-engineered symbiotic slug over a wound than she is to break out a dose of liquid bandage, or to shake her head and say “You're lucky, I just happen to have a spare cybernetic arm here, and it's about your size!”. And, adding a bit to her scariness, she also carries with her heavy-duty tools, useful in starship engineering and automata or cyberware repairs. Still, the sight of a medic with a huge, high-power drill dangling from her belt might not be too reassuring.

Finally, Dream herself is, more or less, a portable shrine to the Freespacers' mecha-druidic religion: she always carries with her an incredibly huge number of trinkets, talismans, mementos, “holy relics” and the like. Most of this items look like regular parts or tools that have been etched, painted, modified, or any combination thereof. All these items, down to the last bolt, have an own name, sometimes even very long and complex. From time to time, Dream will come across something interesting and make it another talisman for her collection. A number of these items are mementos from her previous incarnations, while others are either of random origin, or souvenirs of places visited and things done.

The Starlight Bolt: A large metallic bolt finely carved with stars all over its six sides. From the Brilliant Unwritten Future Amidst The Neverending Heavens. One of the few bolts which held together near the point of impact of an asteroid against the ship's hull. Very old (80 years), belonged to a previous incarnation. Pavel has it. The Bullet of Darkness: One of the six bullets from a Nepleslian SMG that wounded and almost killed Fian during a fight with a saboteur on the NSS Banning. Tied to a string, like a pendant. Dream made two of them: one for herself, one for Fian. A handful of red LED lights: A gift from the Warmonger Keid in exchange for a multicolored scarf and a lock of Dream's hair. The Vessel of the Clouds: A simple, lens-shaped grey canteen half-full of vater. A gift from Lorcan 'Al Ale. The Wrench of the Past and Present: A small, incredibly old metallic wrench, one that has been used for almost a century on the Brilliant Unwritten Future. It has been smoothed from years and years of use, to the point of being practically useless. It has been etched all over. The only distinguishable patterns are a couple of small emblems of the Free State, but most of it is just nonsensical, abstract spirally lines. Gave to Lorcan 'Al Ale as a gift.

Greenwall Lymph: A green liquid extracted from a certain lichen grown on Freespacer ships. A powerful anesthetic and restraining agent. If injected at a certain height near the spinal cord, it paralyzes and makes insensitive the whole body from that point down for a couple of hours. Scalpel: An oversized thing of dark, jagged steel. One of the creepiest items in Dream's first aid kit. Looks more like an evil bayonet or a slaughterhouse cleaver than like a surgical tool. Electromagnetic Forceps: A large forceps with a hi-tech look: circuitry, and a small monitor on the end of a flexible metal support. Some buttons, levers and knobs. It can be used normally, or to project a magnetic field, or even high-energy electrical discharges (for cauterizing and welding). Clotting Slugs: A glass jar full of leech-like creatures adrift in a slimy green-purple goo. Once in contact with a patient's skin, they release a powerful but local clotting agent and, in case of deep wounds, burrow down into the patient's body and attach themselves to stop hemorrhages, becoming symbionts. They slowly dissolve and are assimilated by the natural healing process. However, they are toxic to anyone but Freespacers due to their unique body chemistry, so they should be used just as a temporary patch-up. Fabricator's Prayer: Strips of yellow paper, about 10 cm x 20 cm. On one side is painted, in bright red ink, the image of a five-pointed star, inscribed inside a ten-spoked gearwheel, flanked by two stylized wings, one on each side. The other side is adhesive. This item is usually used by engineers on maintenance duty on starships, to mark and seal off places they've just checked (basically giving off the message “If you don't know what you're doing, don't open this!”). The ink will turn from red to black if the strips are exposed to a rapidly changing magnetic field, so they can be used to find short-circuits and similar electromagnetic troubles.

Standard issue for all Freespacers, Dream's neural implant enhances all her basic upper neural functions: memory, speed and breadth of intelligence, computational prowess, empathy and charisma, creative thinking, problem-solving algorithms, accelerated learning, and so on.

Coupled with the neural implant, her neural interface allows her to commune with any other system adequately equipped, either via cable (which can be deployed on either side of the head, from a small cavity just behind the ear) or through transmissions. This allows Dream to stay permanently in contact with Polysentience, the Free State's hivemind network, uploading and downloading data whenever she sees fit.

Also a standard issue for non-automata Freespacers, this fist-sized metallic device (with annexed status monitor) is grafted to Dream's chest, between her breasts. It contains a mixture of radioactive materials which are used to keep her body temperature high, shower her tissues and organs with much-needed radiation, and control the amount of radioisotopes in her bloodstream, either filtering them, or injecting them. Her Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator is larger than average, since Dream's mission could well take her far from Freespacer fleets for a long time. This gives her a bit more control over her internal chemistry and allows her to survive longer in unfavorable environments, but, at the same time, would make her sightly more radioactive than what would be usual for a Freespacer. Therefore, the Generator has also been plated with lead shielding, which helps reduce the radiation emissions. Plus, Dream's clothes are made of radiation-blocking fabric, which helps lower the emissions even further. The Generator has the radiation hazard sign painted over it, just in case. No, Dream doesn't consider that silly at all. Dream's total radioactive emission under nominal parameters is about 20 millisieverts per hour. The symptoms on all humanoid lifeforms vulnerable to radiation poisoning are:

After more than 200 hours of exposure, or, for some reason, exposure to more massive doses of radiation in shorter amount of time: Permanent sterility, loss of immune system, destruction of bone marrow, frailty and necrosis of numerous organs and tissues. Delirium. Walking Ghost syndrome is common, followed by an 80%-100% chance of mortality from infection, internal bleeding, loss of water, electrolytic imbalance, or any combination thereof. anti-radiation_meds negate the whole damage that a 20 mSv/h dose can deal by repairing the subject's DNA and filtering residual radioactivity in the organism as time goes by, but the subject must assume said meds for the whole period of exposure. If clothes are removed, Dream's radioactivity increases to 40 mSv/h. Without the lead shielding around the Generator (which is clearly labeled “radiation hazard: do not remove” in many languages, by the way), this figure increases to 100 mSv/h. Under such a radiation output, standard Anti-Radiation Med dosage may prove ineffective over very long periods of exposure, since the nanomachines could get damaged or destroyed by gamma and neutron radiation too quickly. Honestly, though, how long do you plan to keep her naked?

A rather cumbersome and conspicuous piece of hardware sporting a big red lens (with some moving parts), it covers Dream's right eye. It can be adjusted to “see” all over the electromagnetic spectrum (gamma ray vision, ultraviolet vision, normal vision, infrared vision, radio/radar vision). It can also project information on her field of view and function both as an engineering scanner (magnetic fields, electrical currents, material stress and microfractures, matter analysis) and a medical scanner (vitals monitoring, x-rays, CAT, MRI, EEG and other medical diagnosis and imaging technologies). It can also work as a makeshift microscope / telescope.

Because Dream ALWAYS gives a nickname to anyone who isn't a Freespacer. Her nicknames are based on Freespacer names, with a “tradename” (a title of sorts) and an “alias” (the actual name).

Cirrus personnel: